Books

Twitterature

The Literary Gift Company should be bookmarked by everyone who loves reading. From a collection of mugs (A Mug's Guide to Grammar – geddit!) bearing helpful slogans like "Less milk and fewer sugar lumps" to cuddly versions of uncuddly writers like Virginia Woolf and Charles Darwin, there are plenty of treats for bookworms. This year's on-trend stocking filler is Twitterature: over 60 classics from Beowulf to Bronte condensed to 140 characters. "Hunt continues for @Lydia – has she tweeted any clues as to her whereabouts? Check @Wickham too – he's the deadbeat." That's Pride and Prejudice. LOL! Lisa Allardice

Emoji Dick

Telephone + guy with moustache + boat + whale + OK sign. If you didn't realise this means "Call me Ishmael", then you need Emoji Dick, the great novel by Herman Melville translated into millions of Japanese emoticons. Funded by Kickstarter and translated more or less incomprehensibly by Amazon Mechanical Turk, there's no better way to tell loved ones at Christmas that "from hell's heart I stab at thee" (wavy heat symbol + arrow-pierced heart shape). (From $40/£24, emojidick.com) Chris Michael

Michelangelo: His Epic Life

There's no rule that says a genius has to be an exciting human being. Shakespeare ended his life as just another retired country gent. But the 16th-century artist Michelangelo fought with Popes and flaunted his love of men (in age when you could be burned for it). In this effortlessly intimate biography, Martin Gayford shows how Michelangelo sweated blood to create awe-inspiring art. He turns a marble legend into a flesh and blood hero for the 21st century. (£30, Penguin) Jonathan Jones

How to Sharpen Pencils

Everything you need to know about how to attain the perfectly pointed pencil in a manual that is both obsessively serious and deadpan funny, pedantic and philosophical. "Putting a point on a pencil – making it functional – is to lead it out of Plato's cave and into the noonday sun of utility." writes David Rees, who actually runs a small pencil-sharpening business from home when not working as a satirist. One chapter is headed: "Psychological risks associated with pencil sharpening: assessment and coping strategies." What's not to love? (£9.99, mhpbooks.com) Sean O'Hagan

The Unclosed Eye: The Music Photography of David Redfern

The British photographer's updated work is a spectacular collection of images of music-making in action, captured over four-and-a-half globetrotting decades. Redfern isn't a distant observer, but a fan with a musician's ear, which is why his pictures of musicians at work and play seem to emit sound as well as light. Miles Davis and Ben Webster share the pages with the Stones, the Beatles and the Who, while the author's stories about life on the road since the 1960s are absorbing. (£25, davidredfern.com) John Fordham

"Hold your own in any situation," is the promise – and, although the arcane terminology of the jazz world represents a severe test, the 2013 edition of the guide comes through so well that even most experts like it. Radio presenter and trumpeter Paul Barnes steers the mystified through the world of Bird, Diz, Duke and Miles, assesses the varying hardnesses of bop and the nuances of swing, all balanced with stories and gags. (£6.99, bluffers.com) JF

This dinky little DAB radio brings Marshall cool to the bedside table. Not as deafening as the infamous stacks used by Hendrix or the Stooges but, in true Spinal Tap style, the Pure Evoke's volume knob goes up to 11. (£120, most department stores) Dave Simpson

Dezeen watches

Now in its third year, the design website's watch emporium stocks timepieces from top designers, including Tom Dixon and Uniform Wares. Dezeen will be running a pop-up shop at its London studio on the two weekends before Christmas. (dezeen.com) OW

Own a piece of art

For most of us, contemporary art is out of reach. But there is a way to own work by well-known artists – in the form of signed limited-edition prints. At the Whitechapel, you can get a Richard Wentworth for £150, or a John Baldessari for a more pricey £2,950; while the ICA has a Donald Urquhart for £70, or a Julie Verhoven for £120. And don't forget commercial gallery websites: White Cube has a Tracey Emin for £360. David Teather

Peter Saville tea towels

Even cooler than his work for Factory Records in the 1970s, the Mancunian's limited-edition tea towels are printed with designs derived from, among other things, food packaging. Great for the dishes – or framed on the wall. (£25, studiovoltaire.org) Alex Needham

Cool posters

Claudia Varosio designs fan posters for grown-ups: gorgeous graphic tributes to her favourite films, books, bands and TV shows, reimagined with a pared-back, mid-century aesthetic. The Mad Men obsessive will cherish her cut-out-and-keep-style tribute to its best costumes, and the series's famous falling man opening finds an echo in her poster for the 1995 film La Haine. But my favourite is a triptych depicting those three Richard Linklater films: an empty station for Before Sunrise, Julie Delpy strumming a guitar for Before Sunset, and twin silhouettes against a darkening sky for Before Midnight. (£25, etsy.com) Laura Barnett

Booze

Slayer wine

Photograph: Backstreetmerch.com Backstreetmerch.com/PR

Few things say Christmas like the oeuvre of Slayer, which perhaps explains the popularity of the thrash-metal pioneers' Christmas jumpers. There are two: one with pentagrams and skulls, the other with an eagle and swords. If that doesn't suit, try some Slayer baubles – or splash out on the band's own wine, a 2012 Californian Cabernet Sauvignon that comes in a presentation mini-coffin. Pour a glass, ease into your chair by the log fire, listen to Public Display of Dismemberment, and enter the realm of Santa. (£31.05, slayer-drinks-shop.com) Alexis Petridis

Benjamin Britten beer

What better way to toast the great composer's centenary than with a bottle of Native Britten, an ale brewed by Adnams using Suffolk ingredients. So if you want notes of honey and thyme that resonate with an appropriately ambiguous alcoholic chord of dryness, sharpness, and good-old fashioned hoppiness, just Turn the Screw! (£22.99 for 12 bottles, adnams.co.uk) Tom Service

Music

A briefcase of Bob Dylan

As box sets go, the Bob Dylan Complete Album Collection is about as deluxe as it gets: 41 CDs, all his original live and studio albums, plus two CDs of b-sides and rarities. It's also available as a harmonica-shaped USB stick, if you've got no compunction about giving someone something that looks like a keyring ($179.98, myplaydirect.com). AP

Play the paper bag

Photograph: Thomas Northcut/Getty

Sick of all those smug relations sitting around strumming their new ukuleles but have nothing to offer yourself? Then ask Santa for David Holt's How to Play Folk Rhythms DVD. One of America's finest (and funniest) traditional musicians, Holt breaks down the basics of playing the bones (they're not just for making stock, you know) and demonstrates the washboard technique he learned from a 105-year-old woman in North Carolina. He even shows you how to play the paper bag. However, pre-war bags were best; new ones just don't have the same tone. ($19.95, homespuntapes.com). Alfred Hickling

Purple Snow

The Minneapolis Sound was an explosion of jheri curls and digital soul in the US midwest, centred on Alexander O'Neal, Jimmy Jam and of course Prince. Their music was disco but with its sumptuous orchestral silks starched to a sassy modern funk. This box set, which charts its development up to Prince's Purple Rain, comes with a 30,000 word hardback book full of interviews with the scene's cornerstones – and gorgeous photos of the techno-cosmic fashions. But the main selling point is the 32 tracks: astoundingly good obscurities filled with tight vocal harmonies and rigid synths. Slap that bass! (£85 for LP version, £30 for CDs, numerogroup.com) Ben Beaumont-Thomas

David Bowie plectrum

On one side, this guitar pick depicts Bowie in his 1970s Aladdin Sane splendour, while the other features a pattern from one of his jumpsuits. The perfect gift for budding guitarists hoping some (Ziggy) Stardust will rub off on their playing. (75p, vandashop.com) DS

All the blues you can carry

Deluxe boxsettery has turned into a bit of an arms race – and The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records takes things to bankruptcy levels. A mammoth collection of 800 blues and jazz tracks from 1917-1927, released on the Paramount label and now reissued by Jack White's label Third Man and the late John Fahey's Revenant, this makes any "double gatefold vinyl" look pathetic. Six vinyl records (colour: "buried chestnut") are housed in a laser-etched white birch wooden folio, along with a softbound and hardbound book, reproduction adverts and a brass USB stick containing the full 800 tracks. The whole thing comes in an oak suitcase – and this is only the first volume. ($400, thirdmanrecords.com) BBT

New you

Become a standup

Got a friend who's funny? Or a partner you'd like to see less of? Well, get them vouchers for a course in standup. Comedy agency Laughing Horse runs intensive two-day courses (in London, Brighton, Manchester and Edinburgh), or even personal tuition, for beginners. Alumni include Daniel Sloss and Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee Imran Yusuf. (from £99, laughinghorsecomedy.co.uk) Brian Logan

Perform in a circus

Ever watched a circus act and wondered if you could do that? Now, thanks to a company called Circus Space, you can. OK, you may not be as good, but you can get a taste of what it would be like to soar through the air on a flying trapeze or walk the tightrope, and see if you've got what it takes to be a juggler. For ages eight to 80. (£69, circusspace.co.uk) Lyn Gardner

Stocking fillers

Wind-up Richard Wagner doll

Lovers of the composer not yet sated by the bicentenary celebrations will adore this period costume 14in doll. Not only does he wear black velour trousers, sky-blue cravat, double breasted coat and that inimitable black beret, he also plays Ride of the Valkyries. So if Wagner really winds you up, here's your chance to get your own back. ($19.95, seattleopera.org) George Hall

Highbrow finger puppets

The Unemployed Philosophers Guild (motto: the unexamined gift is not worth giving) is a treasure trove of arty nonsense, from a Salvador Dalí watch with moustaches for hands, to a Nietzschean "Will to Power" fruit and nut bar to transcend good and evil, and keeping you going till lunchtime. The funniest stocking fillers, though, must be the puppets that take great thinkers off the bookshelf and put them on your index finger. Choose from James Joyce, Andy Warhol, Munch's Scream, Dorothy Parker and many more. If a four-inch Michel Foucault finger pupper doesn't say Christmas, what does? ( $5.95 each, philosophersguild.com) Justine Jordan

Bathing Bad bath salts

Photograph: Firebox.com Firebox.com/PR

The Breaking Bad merchandisers will be hoping to shift plenty of "crystal meth" bath salts over Christmas. And who knows, ladies, they might even encourage your significant other to have the occasional bath. As it says on the packet, just add Walter (£14.99, firebox.com). And with Walt and Jesse's long-suffering lawyer rumoured to be getting his own show, what better way to celebrate than with a Better Call Saul tax disk holder? "In legal trouble?" it reads. "Sue 'em now!" (£3.99, amazon.co.uk) Maxton Walker

Rock'n'Pop Stars of the Sixties paper dolls

Bored of baubles? Artist Tom Tierney's highly collectible book of paper-doll pop stars allows you to decorate your home in painstakingly detailed, miniature versions of the likes of Mick Jagger and Cher. (prices vary, tomtierney.com) DS

Dance

Become a friend of Covent Garden

Popular casts and popular programmes sell out fast at the Royal Ballet. While a subscription to the Friends scheme won't magic you to the top of the queue, it does qualify you for priority booking. Other benefits include advance notice of repertory and casting, copies of Opera House magazine, and the chance to buy tickets to open rehearsals (from £88, roh.org.uk) Judith Mackrell

The Tales of Hoffmann

The Tales of Hoffmann. Photograph: Alamy

Fans of Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes will love this 1951 film version of the Offenbach opera, which moves the concept of cinematic ballet to a delirious new level of fantasy and style. Danced as well as sung, with a cast including Moira Shearer, Leonid Massine, Frederick Ashton and Robert Helpmann, it's a gorgeous and darkly surreal piece of film-making. JM

Kids

Rubberband-shooting ruler

For the architect or engineer who's still a naughty schoolkid at heart, Swiss designer Sebastian Bergne has invented Bandit, a ruler that can shoot rubber bands. Having a frustrating meeting? Just whip out your Bandit and show the client who's boss. (£18, buysebastianbergne.com) OW

A Little History of the World

EH Gombrich is best known for The Story of Art. But as a 26-year-old art history graduate, he also wrote, in six weeks in 1935, a history of the world for younger readers that begins with the dinosaurs and remains fresh today. This autumn it was published in a large-format illustrated edition with photographs and paintings to bring the past to life for interested minds from nine years upwards. (Yale, £14.99) JJ

Horrible Histories box set

Like youth, Horrible Histories is wasted on the young. Remember I Can't Believe You Fed Me Seal Blubber!? It was a sketch pastiching the I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! ad to make points about Viking nutrition. No? Well, how about Sat on a Bus, a song about Rosa Parks's battle against segregation? Or Minted, the song that pastiched Dizzee Rascal's Bonkers to tell us about the wealth of Roman general and politician Marcus Licinius Crassus? No? Well, brain up with this box set of all five series. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll hurl. (£29.99, bbcshop.com) Stuart Jeffries

• This article was amended on Friday 20 December 2013. The price of the Tracey Emin at White Cube is £360 not £260. This has been corrected.